Celebrating Barbecue: The Ultimate Guide to America's 4 Regional Styles of 'Cue

ALSO BY DOTTY GRIFFITH

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Wild About Munchies

Wild About Chili

Dallas Cuisine

EDITED BY DOTTY GRIFFITH

The Mansion on Turtle CreeK Cookbook

by Dean Fearing

Celebrating

Barbecue

The Ultimate Guide to America’s

Four Regional Styles of’Cue

DOTTY GRIFFITH

SIMON & SCHUSTER

NEW YORK • LONDON • TORONTO • SYDNEY • SINGAPORE

SIMON & SCHUSTER

Rockefeller Center

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New York, New York 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright © 2002 by Dotty Griffith

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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Illustrations by Renée Herman

Book design and map by Kevin Hanek; set in Monotype Bulmer

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 0-7432-1210-X

eISBN: 978-1-439-14208-0

acknowledgments

This book is dedicated to Kelly and Caitlin, my wonderful son and daughter. Thanks for smelling, tasting, and eating so much barbecue.

Thanks also to the many friends I’ve made through writing about barbecue and judging barbecue cook-offs over the past twenty-plus years. For encouragement and help as sources and for guiding me to other sources, thanks to Karen Adler, John T. Edge, Bob Garner, Hubert Green, Smoky Hale, Michael LeMaster, Gary Puckett, Jim Tabb, and Carolyn Wells. For tasting and testing recipes, thanks to Martha Hershey. For research, thanks to Michele Axley.

As always, thanks to my agent, Dedie Leahy, for her faith and trust, and to my editor, Sydny Miner, for her confidence in the idea.

contents

PART ONE

An Invitation to Die

Me and ’Cue

Barbecue: Past, Present, and Future

The Right Stuff

Using This Book

PART TWO

Carolina Barbecue:

Where Vinegar, Tomato, and Mustard Factions Wage Taste Wars

Memphis Barbecue:

Dry vs. Wet Ribs, or The Town of Pork and Bones

Texas Barbecue:

Here’s the Beef!

Kansas City Barbecue:

Where East Meets West

Wild cards:

Santa Maria Beef Barbecue, Owensboro Mutton Barbecue, St. Louis Barbecued Snouts, and Playing Chicken

Hot Bites and Sides

Sweet Endings:

Pies, Cakes, and Other Regional Favorites

SOURCES

Barbecue Associations

Barbecue Contests

Classes on Barbecue

Barbecue Publications

Sources of Ingredients

Sources of Equipment

On-Line Sources

GLOSSARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LIQUID AND DRY MEASURE EQUIVALENCIES

INDEX

an invitation to die

Writing a book about barbecue is almost guaranteed to garner more death threats than dinner invitations. Few subjects incite more passion. Consequently, just about all the outdoor cooks who fire up a kettle grill on the patio think their brisket/ribs/pork recipe is pretty darn good, maybe even the best. And if that’s what they think, they’re right. I wouldn’t argue … although I might make a suggestion.

It’s been said that all politics is local. The same applies to barbecue. And barbecue is personal. Very personal. The barbecue that most of us love best is the kind we grew up with (if we’re fortunate enough to come from a native barbecue region) or the style that first passed our lips. Barbecue imprints powerfully on the palate and the soul. One’s first taste of barbecue is never the last, but that first taste leaves an impression that lasts a lifetime.

Barbecue is the most American of foods; to hell with apple pie. If Congress decided to declare a national dish, barbecue should win by acclamation. I can’t think of anything else that generates as much anticipation, excitement, controversy, competition, and festivity. Yet it is a food born of deprivation, hard times, cheap ingredients, and simple equipment—very much like another American original, jazz. Often intertwined (especially in the regional styles of Memphis and Kansas City), barbecue and jazz are uniquely American and specifically Southern, yet appreciation of these art forms migrated east, north, west, and beyond the seas as well.

Like the roots of jazz, the basis of the cooking technique we call barbecue originates in the South, most likely in what became the state of North Carolina. While Americans and cooks all over the world have adapted barbecue basics to local preferences, four regional styles—Carolina, Memphis, Texas, and Kansas City—dominate and define the genre.

A point of clarification: This book is about barbecue—long, slow cooking over low temperatures—not grilling, which is fast cooking over high heat. Sometimes grilling is used to finish or glaze barbecue, but virtually everything in this book takes hours, not minutes. In general, to barbecue means to cook directly over or beside coals at a temperature of 212° to 300°F. Sometimes the temperature inside the cooker may go a bit higher. No problem as long as it comes back down. A bit lower? No problem if not for too long.

The target temperature is just above the boiling point, to heat the moisture in the meat without evaporating it. And that’s cooking low and slow—i.e., barbecuing.

Within that rather narrow range of temperatures, a lot of different things can happen. Given the differences in styles of barbecue, it is amazing how similar the basic processes are. So what makes the difference?

THE FOUR GREAT STYLES OF AMERICAN BARBECUE

The characteristics that distinguish regional barbecue styles—meat, fuel, sauce, and results—are remarkably consistent within regions and vary greatly from one region to another. In the Carolinas the meat is pork; the fuel is oak or hickory; the mandatory sauce is vinegar based; and the meat may be served as shredded or chopped pork sandwiches topped with coleslaw.

Pork is the meat of choice throughout the South. In Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi the styles are basically mergers of the pure Carolina style, with redder, sweeter sauces, culminating in the pulled pork of Tennessee and Kentucky, where sauces are thicker. But the real signature of Southern barbecue is Memphis ribs.

Whether those ribs are served wet or dry is a bone of contention. The ribs are, of course, pork; the fuel is hickory or oak. The wet or dry issue relates to the sauce and whether it is brushed on the ribs (wet) during cooking or served on the side (dry).

In Texas the meat is beef; the signature fuel is mesquite; the optional sauce is tomato based and served at the table; and the meat is dramatically seasoned with pep- pery spice blends called rubs and may be served as thin-sliced brisket with sides like beans and potato salad.

Between those poles of style and geography lies Kansas City, the barbecue world’s Constantinople, where East meets West and beef meets pork. The meat can be either beef brisket or pork ribs; the fuel is hickory or fruitwood; the sauce, usually sweet and hot, is as important as the meat; and the finished product is very tender, sticky with sauce. In Kansas City what you put the sauce on matters less than the sauce itself. The meat can be chicken, beef brisket, spare or baby back ribs, lamb, or anything else that takes to fire, smoke, and sauce.

None of this means that you can’t find good examples outside their respective regions. In fact, you can find cooks practicing these styles—and hybrids—all over the United States. This is, after all, about barbecue, not culinary, regional, or ethnic purity.

BARBECUE REGIONS OF THE UNITED STATES

Because Kansas City-style sauce was the prototype for the nation’s first bottled version, sauce is what defines barbecue for many. People who live farther from the barbecue heartland are more likely to think of barbecue as anything that comes off a grill with barbecue sauce on it.

Pork barbecue reigns throughout the Carolinas and the rest of the South, with sauce variations from vinegary to tomatoey.

In Memphis the rib becomes almighty, but pulled pork with a thick tomato sauce is a strong tradition as well.

Texas barbecued beef brisket rules in cattle country.

If you’re born and raised on it [a certain style], that’s what you like.

—Jim Tabb, barbecue judge and rub maker, Tryon, North Carolina

Barbecue is low and slow; grilling is hot and fast.

—Carolyn Wells, Kansas City Barbecue Society, Kansas City, Missouri

If it moves, we cook it.

—Carolyn Wells, Kansas City Barbecue Society, Kansas City, Missouri

The best sauce is homemade because it’s the freshest. Use a bottled sauce only when time requires you to.

—Ardie Davis, The Great Barbecue Sauce Book

me and ’cue

Where I grew up in northeast Texas, beef brisket and barbecue are synonymous. Sausage, chicken, or ribs might be included on a combo plate or at a cookout. Hickory is the wood of choice around home. Geographically and spiritually, this part of the state is closer to the Deep South and the hardwood forests of Arkansas and Louisiana. Mesquite from the scrubby tree of the same name is the favorite wood in the southwestern parts of the state and has come to be an identifying characteristic of Texas barbecue, but Texans use a lot of oak as well.

For years I never thought much about the origin of barbecued ribs, which were, of course, pork. At that time, to me—and to hardcore Texas loyalists—barbecue was beef. The anomaly of pork ribs was a dirty little secret, but this mostly unacknowledged inconsistency foreshadowed a personal epiphany.

My first experiences with barbecue other than Texas style came through my travels, particularly as a food journalist. My first encounter with dry ribs at The Rendezvous in Memphis was as reassuring and familiar as pulled pork sandwiches with coleslaw were strange and exotic. Except that the place was so nice and the waiters so proper. That seldom happens in a Texas joint.

Hooked on the differences as well as the similarities, I was into barbecue diversity before diversity was cool.

Whether it is a blessing or a curse I don’t know, but I love to try things I’ve never had before, so my ingrained barbecue bias has never been an impediment. A marker and a baseline maybe, but never a source of prejudice against other styles. I’ll try damn near anything, which can be very helpful when it comes to barbecued snoots. More about them later.

Although I’d read about Carolina-style barbecue, this Texan was still surprised years ago when I first encountered strings of shredded gray pork at the annual Memphis in May contest, where I was a judge in 1984. Wan and pale, the meat was seasoned with thin, vinegary sauces flecked with pepper that seemed to me more like marinades. But again, the reality of the succulent meat and the vibrant tang of the sauces shook my world. What a discovery! Especially the crisp bits of skin and fat chopped in to provide textural contrast to the satiny meat. So different and so wonderful for a barbecue virgin from Terrell, Texas.

Family ties as well as work took me to Kansas City many times over the years. Once again I encountered similarities to Texas barbecue, particularly in the beef brisket. After tasting Kansas City ribs, however, I should have clicked on the importance of sauce, but I failed to appreciate the locals’ magnificent obsession until I met one of the ’cue queens of K.C., Karen Adler. She has done a lot to school me in the ways of barbecue, not only in Kansas City but elsewhere. Just how fascinated are Kansas Citians with barbecue sauce? They love to make it, collect it, and use it. A nephew from Kansas City, Charles Rhodes, now lives in North Carolina, and he maintains two shelves of barbecue sauce in his pantry, mostly from Gates Barbecue, his hometown favorite. He never fails to bring some back when he goes home; friends and family bring him more when they visit. This young man has a Depression-era mentality, characteristic of his grandparents’ generation, about barbecue sauce. He simply can’t have too much on hand. Although still deeply committed to Kansas City barbecue, particularly brisket, this stalwart drove me from one end of North Carolina to the other tasting pork barbecue. If not converts, at least now we’re educated.

Judging barbecue contests like Memphis in May and the Jack Daniel’s Invitational has given me a chance to meet a lot of cooks and sauce freaks; to taste and see the various styles. What I’ve learned is that fascination with barbecue is as universal as the human fascination with fire.

After cooking my way through the recipes in this book, I’ve also come to the conclusion that pork, specifically pork shoulder, is the best meat for barbecue. It is the easiest to cook and the hardest to screw up. Brisket requires a lot of baby-sitting. With ribs, you’ve got to have the right touch. A whole hog … well, that’s a tough one for most of us even to contemplate. But shoulder—with a sweet, hot Kansas City sauce